


Slayer of Monsters

by MisterMeowMeow



Category: Terraria, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Epic Battles, Fantasy, Gen, Magic, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29979774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisterMeowMeow/pseuds/MisterMeowMeow
Summary: After settling down in Toussaint, Geralt thought he was content to spend the rest of his life in retirement. He should've known that would never last.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	1. Geralt's Guide to getting lost in Enchanted Forests

**Author's Note:**

> So, this story is based somewhat on my own, current, modded Terraria playthrough. I'm using a bunch of weird content mods, and thought to myself - you know who would fit perfectly into this world? Geralt. 
> 
> But while he's the protagonist of this story, he is NOT the player character - that's someone else. Any game mechanics and such are glossed over, and the world is, for all intents and purposes, "real" for the characters in it. I'll need to do a lot of worldbuilding, and I will likely downgrade the lore of mods like Calamity into the realm of legend rather than hard fact - so the Jungle Tyrant for example is more of a mythological figure than a palpable being. Sort of like the Hobbits see the King of Arnor - they swear by him, occasionally reference him as ruling them, when he and the Kingdom itself have been gone for generations.
> 
> Note also that I'll update this only sporadically as I play through the game. I've pumped up the difficulty all the way, so updates might be inconsistent. This is because I want to capture the energy I feel during the battles in the story itself.

Geralt was bored.

Incredibly, incredibly bored.

True, the gentle hills of Toussaint were beautiful, and the climate was perfect, but he was still bored - and restless. A combination of emotions that were unbearable to the extreme.

There was the occasional Drowner or Nekker to break up the monotony, but that only proved that he was not made for retirement. He was a man of action, and he craved to wander the world as he did before.

"Nothing for it," he said from where he was looking out the window. "I need to take a walk."

* * *

'A walk' quickly turned into getting armored up in his old gear, strapping both silver and steel to his back and setting off into the countryside. Geralt had intended to be back in perhaps a week or less, but this week quickly turned into two as he began hearing rumors of a new, strange forest that had seemingly grown overnight on the edge of Angren.

Dusting off his card skills, he battled several inkeepers for the information, and slowly but surely followed the trail of rumor and gossip northwards. The stories became more and more credible, and before long, tales circulated of the forest being enchanted. And evil.

He could tell the first part was true, that much confirmed the mere sight of the wood - it looked ancient, the trees' bark gnarled, but he knew it wasn't older than 2 months at best.

The forest wasn't large, covering just a tiny bit of the valley it was in, but it held a presence that he couldn't deny. It was likely that any lumberjack stupid enough to dare attack it would suffer a most gruesome fate. Enchanted forests tended to be like that.

Geralt knew it would only be a matter of time before the first humans would attempt to venture inside, and so he decided to head off the inevitable confrontation by stepping foot inside himself. In hindsight, likely not the cleverest thing he'd ever done.

Almost instantly, the woods closed around him. A few steps into the brush, and he was already hopelessly lost - retracing his steps was similarily impossible, footprints erased seemingly by the very earth itself, and scent scattered in the wind. It was no use - the forest had him now. He decided to press on.

The flora was strange as well - there were plants he'd never seen before, others only barely resembled ones he knew. This was no ordinary enchanted forest - it was deeper than that, deeper than normal magic, even. As he walked, he became aware of a trodden path beneath his feet - it wound between the trees, very specific trees, trees which seemed to need to be walked between in order to stay on the path. One time, he attempted to circle around a tree in the other direction, and the path was nowhere to be seen. He decided to stay on it after that.

His medallion had began humming almost as soon as he'd entered the forest, which was about what he expected.

He almost stumbled when it suddenly ceased humming, and he saw the edge of the forest. Had it just let him go?

As soon as he saw where this edge was located, he realized this was not the case. Stretching before Geralt's eyes was a large, flat plain - something that was impossible if he were still where the enchanted forest had been. It had covered the end of a closed mountain valley - and this definitely did not look like a closed mountain valley.

Turning around, Geralt attempted to reenter the forest, but found that he could not, because it had ceased to exist. His eyes widened as he saw what he had come out of - a small gathering of oak trees, barely enough to be called "forest" in the first place. He could see the other side of the gathering, and there was no sign of the expanse of the forest he'd just walked through.

A few hours of examining the copse of trees revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Not a single scrap of magic, no strange species or mutated animals, nothing. It was just a few trees growing on a hill.

Apart from that, however, Geralt had another problem - no matter how hard he attempted to match up the nearby mountains, he could find none of them on his maps. Where ever he was, it wasn't anywhere he'd been before. His best guess was that the forest might have transported him to the far east of the continent, or far to the west across the ocean, because the north was cold and the south was hot, and the climate in this place seemed to be relatively identical to that of the Northern Kingdoms.

Worse than this, however, was that he could see absolutely no civilisation anywhere. No roads, no towns or fields or cities. Not even any smoke or ruins.

It wasn't as though Geralt didn't know how to survive off the land, but without anyone else around he had little hope of discovering his own location.

Eventually, he decided that westward (according to the sun) was as good a direction as any, and headed out.

* * *

As the sun slowly crawled towards the horizon, Geralt became acutely aware that he hadn't seen any sort of beast or monster for the entire day. They were usually extremely common in areas which were sparsely populated, as a smaller population of humans meant they weren't hunted as much, but he hadn't seen anything save a few insects and small critters.

Eventually, he crested a small hill, and spied a spot of light off in the distance, perhaps an hour's walk away, inside a small river valley. As he got closer to where he'd seen the light, he also began to taste smoke on the wind, and when he carefully walked in the dim twilight, he could make out several large shapes. Too large to be people, the shapes turned out to be a group of ramshackle huts clustered around a large campfire.

His stealth skills must've been rusty, for the first thing he felt as he slinked forth from between two of the huts was the point of something sharp touching the bottom of his chin. His eyes travelled along the arm holding the pointy thing, and revealed a disheveled man with sunken eyes who looked straight at him.

"You're not a zombie" said the man.


	2. Settling In

"I'm not, no." Geralt said carefully, extremely aware of the knife currently touching his throat.

"Wyatt, stop!" came a voice from behind the man, alongside a hand that quickly disarmed him. That hand belonged to what was unmistakably a dwarf - small, stout, and with the same intensity in his eyes that all dwarves shared. "I apologize, stranger, but we're a little on edge. There's monsters about, monsters that look like a man until they bite your arms off. Go back inside, Wyatt, it's not safe out here."

"Those 'monsters' would probably be the zombies your friend referred to, I'm guessing?"

"Yes. Come on, come on. We shouldn't linger."

The dwarf dragged Geralt into the largest shack, which was filled with crates, chests, barrels and various bundles. A warehouse of some kind. Huddled around a small fire sat Wyatt, the strange man from before, a woman with blond hair and a white uniform with a red cross on the hat, as well as a Southling with a very finely made purple robe and turban. Hearing a noise behind him, Geralt saw the dwarf struggling with a crate, and moved over to help him. Together, they barricaded the door.

"Thank ye, stranger. Say, what brings you to this cursed land?" the two sat down by the fire, all eyes on Geralt.

"I was just wandering - that's what I do, I'm a Witcher."

"A what now?"

"Is that a male witch?"

"No, no, I hunt monsters for a living. A Witcher. Do you not know what those are?"

Where the hell was he that Witchers were an unknown?

"Hah! Professional monster hunter. If that's true, we're fortunate you stumbled across our little camp." exclaimed the Southling.

"Aye, that it is. The only one of us who's any use in combat... well..." the dwarf trailed off.

"She went out into the night." whispered the woman fearfully.

That did not sound good.

"She's gone to distract it, draw it away! It's noble and kind!" shouted Wyatt, jumping to his feet.

"Draw _what_ away?" Geralt asked.

"The First Seal! The Watcher!" he answered, before falling bonelessly back onto his chair. "I hope she makes it. She'll be miles away by now."

The healer sat down beside Wyatt, patting his hand reassuringly. Facing Geralt, she said "We don't know what's wrong with him. Maybe he saw something he wasn't supposed to see, or knows something he wasn't supposed to know, but he rarely makes complete sense. I'm Hannah, by the way. Resident Nurse. As much of a residence as this is, anyway."

"Geralt of Rivia. Pleasure."

"Bazdin, but you can call me Baz. I'm responsible for the explosives around here." the dwarf grinned proudly.

"Hiram, professional dye-maker."

What was a 'dye maker' doing in such a dangerous place?

"Wyatt, but you knew that." he was staring into the fire with glassy eyes.

"He's our guide to these lands - and he knows his stuff. Without him, we never would've survived the first night, even if he is a bit mad." Heather explained.

* * *

"You said the land was cursed, before." said Geralt into the silence.

"Aye, that it is," came Bazdin's voice from beside him, "spots all over are cursed. evil. _Take heed when the grass turns purple and the sky darkens, 'cause that means your death is near._ Still remember my nana telling me that story."

"We call it 'The Corruption', but truly we don't know what it is. It's like a necrotic wound, but on the surface of the world itself, rotting everything around it. And it spreads - slowly, but spread it does." explained the Nurse.

"And that's not all." interjected Hiram, "I've heard rumors that the land itself can swallow a man whole, and that it spawns monsters unlike any you've seen before."

"Hiram's right, Geralt, there are monsters in this world unlike any you've seen before, just waiting, lurking... and corrupting." Wyatt's voice trailed off, then picked back up "and not just that, in tandem to the rot exists another evil, its sibling in intent but not spirit. If ever you see crimson on the horizon, turn back lest you be destroyed."

* * *

When the shrieking of hoarse, dry voices outside finally stopped, Geralt and Hiram dragged the crate to the side once more, stepping outside into the fresh air. The others were still asleep, and the fire had burnt out a while ago.

"She should be back by now, something's wrong." Hiram wrung his hands, looking at the hills surrounding the tiny encampment.

"I don't- wait, do you see that?" Geralt pointed upwards, just at the crest of a hill, where he'd seen something glint in the morning sun.

"It's her! She's alive!"

As the figure got closer, Geralt could see it was heavily favoring one leg. The glint he'd seen was that of metal - specifically, a forged iron sword. He winced in sympathy as she approached the two of them, several wounds visible across her bare arms and face. When she saw him, she made to draw her sword, but it seemed to be stuck in the strip of leather that fastened it to her back.

"Hiram!" she called with a hoarse voice, fiddling with the strap, "Who's that? Are we in trouble?"

"His name is Geralt! He's a friend!"

She nodded, and walked closer. He could see she'd once worn armor carved from wood, but most of it had been destroyed.

"Alright, I trust you Hiram. Don't do something stupid, Geralt, and we'll get along nicely. Now excuse me, I need to go see Hannah."

She shuffled by them towards the warehouse.

"Sorry, she's usually more outgoing than that."

* * *

Once patched up, the woman was much more amiable. The Nurse had poured some sort of red concoction over her wounds and then bandaged them, which seemed to be speeding up her recovery immensely.

"My name's Iris. I'm the one who protects this sorry band of people. No offense, guys." "none taken, Iris"

"Geralt of Rivia. I'm a Witcher."

"Oh yeah, Hannah told me about that - monster hunter, was it?"

"Indeed."

"You know, we could use someone like you. I'm sure you've noticed that we have somewhat of a... monster problem."

"You mean those 'zombies'?"

"Hah! If only. No, it's teeming with monsters out there. If it's not zombies, then it's those damn eyes out to bash you into bloody paste, or glowing bats trying to eat your eyeballs. Nowhere is safe, except maybe for the really big cities. Say, Geralt, you look strong."

Oh no. He was about to get roped into something, wasn't he?

"What do you say to a mutual agreement? You're strong, maybe even a warrior - if you help us fortify the camp and help me protect them from the monsters, I'll let you stay, completely for free."

"And if not?"

"Well, then you pay rent or something, I'm sure we could figure something out. What - do you think I'd just throw you out?"

Geralt only had to think for a minute. He had little hope of finding out where he was without a knowledgeable local - and though a capable Witcher he may be, he had no delusions about standing up to the veritable mob that had rioted through the camp last night. They would drown him through sheer numbers.

"That sounds good." he said, and Iris was delighted.


	3. Banishing the Glade Wraith

Geralt had little experience with the axe, seeing as he mostly used blades, but his Witcher mutations gave him the natural strength necessary to brute-force it. Upon sealing their agreement, Iris had immediately roped him into thinning out some of the surrounding trees for use in a palisade, and there he was, swinging his axe at stubborn trees and wondering how it had come to this.

None of the villagers had known about the Nilfgaardian empire, or about the Northern Kingdoms, or even about more esotheric but ubiquitous concepts like the Conjunction of the Spheres. The first two he could somewhat understand - if he was on the other side of the world, perhaps geographic knowledge hadn't spread this far. But the last? The Conjunction was the source of all monsters, of humans themselves, even. How could they not know? Even the most uneducated peasant village had an elder or a wise woman who relayed these tales.

Even Wyatt, who was almost supernaturally knowledgeable about a lot of things, didn't know what he referred to.

What was also strange was the magic Iris used. Geralt was no sorcerer himself, but he'd had enough... experience with them to pick up some things, and they were decidedly unlike what she was capable of. Though she used a simple steel sword as her main weapon, melee combat could only do so much - and so she supplemented the blade with what was by appearances an enchanted branch of wood that fired a small cloud of sparks. She undoubtedly possessed magical talent, because Geralt could not use the wand himself, but she used magic exclusively through enchanted objects and alchemy, rather than her hands.

The palisade was coming along nicely. With all the villagers helping out, several trees had been felled and dragged towards the village, then cut apart with their axes and driven into the ground. Aard proved most useful in this - its telekinetic force would drive the log into the surprisingly soft earth.

The wall would not do much against flying monsters, like these "demon eyes" he'd had described to him, but zombies would hopefully be deterred.

* * *

The night proved this theory. Although a small group of zombies began throwing their bodies against the wall, it held, and they eventually wandered off, likely in search of easier prey.

Geralt watched them, fascinated. He now understood why the Guide had thought him one of them - without his witcher senses, he wouldn't be able to tell some of them apart from normal men in the darkness. Only when they got close to one of the torches staked on top of their wall did the discolored skin and occasional gaping wounds become visible.

"Do you know what causes them?" he whispered to Iris, who was perched on the roof of the warehouse next to him, occasionally firing a spark at the approaching zombies.

One of the shamblers lit on fire, its tattered clothing smoldering.

"No. They rise randomly, as far as anyone can tell. My grandmother would tell me that zombification would only happen rarely in her childhood, and only if the body wasn't cremated or blessed, but in her time all monsters were much less common. As far as I know, it's a natural process that affects all dead humans to a different extent."

Perhaps some sort of pathogen? But what kind of disease could raise the undead? That was more the territory of a curse. And on this scale, the curse would be massive - definitely powerful enough to resonate with his medallion.

"Do they remember who they- woah!"

Geralt was torn from his question by what appeared to be star, falling from the sky! He knew shooting stars, yes, but that was no shooting star! It had plummeted from the sky, and impacted right among the horde, tearing apart several of them! What was more, his medallion hummed with power, clearly resonating with it from across the entire village.

"What, you never see a star fall before?" Iris smirked at him, echoing his own prior words about Witchers.

* * *

Iris ended up distracting the horde with a flaming arrow, sending Geralt to collect the star. It was so bright, looking straight at it made his eyes hurt, but it was incredibly light. And very cold.

Picking it up, he was surprised that the only feeling he got from it was a faint, tingling numbness from where his hand touched the star as he carried it inside.

"That's it, careful. Put it into a crate, and seal it up tight." Bazdin was gesturing at a large crate off in the corner, lifting a heavy black cloth off it. Inside the crate were two other stars, identical to the one he was carrying, and he carefully placed it inside. Bazdin placed the cloth back and weighted it down with a few stones, before going to join the others by the fireplace.

"The moment a fallen star is touched by sunlight, it disappears," said Hannah in explanation, "It just sort of... pops into a shower of sparkles. I used to wake up at dawn and watch the sunrise from my village's clock tower. The dozens of stars that'd fallen during the night popping in the first few rays was always the best part."

"They do have a certain majesty to them, I admit. And I assume they're useful, if we seem to be collecting them?" asked Geralt, still working the tingling from his fingertips.

"They're almost completely made of pure magical energy," explained Iris, who'd come down from the roof, "vaguely crystalline, so you can grind them down into a dust, which is used in some potions and other magic."

"The crystalline structure can also be amplified," Wyatt piped in, "If five stars gather, pressure can force them into a new form. From false gem to true light, ready to impart their power."

"Mana crystals, I know about those," said the Nurse, "When I studied medicine, our school was right next to the arcane university. One of the mages came to a lecture, held up a star just like the ones in the crate, only it was blue. It exploded, and then the light sort of... flowed into him, increasing his power."

Alright, that was _definitely_ not how he remembered magic functioning. Stars falling from the sky? Magical crystals that impart their power?

"There's something I've been wondering," said Geralt, "How did you all come to be here? There are no cities for miles, no roads or any sort of civilisation anywhere. And, apologies, but a dye-maker and a nurse do not seem like normal members of an exploration."

The others grimaced, expressions darkening. Uh oh, he'd just lost all his good will, hadn't he?

"Don't worry Geralt, we're not mad or anything. It's just... a difficult topic." said Iris eventually.

Geralt looked at their faces, and saw the barely concealed tiredness - he saw the scars adorning the Bazdin's arms, scars which looked like they'd been made by claws, not explosives. He saw the tattered edges of Hannah's otherwise pristine uniform. He saw the pronounced wrinkles in Hiram's face, despite the man otherwise not looking older than himself.

"It's obvious that you're not... from around here, in the loosest terms. Wyatt saw it in your face the moment he looked at you. I don't know how you got to be here, but ending up 'here' was profoundly unlucky." she looked right at him, "Until a few years ago, the monsters were relatively manageable. True, most people were concentrated into cities, but living outside of them was possible. You'd occasionally deal with a moonflare bat or a persistent demon eye, but other than that they left you alone if you left them alone. But one day, it's like they flipped. All across the world, monsters became vicious to the extreme - small villages were overrun, and smaller cities were slowly starved. Most of us grew up in one of those smaller cities, and barely managed to escape. I remember when our food ran out..." she trailed off, lost in memories.

Bazdin picked up where stopped, "Most of us have been wanderin' for a while. I had my grenades, and eventually found Hannah, and together we rescued Hiram from a swarm of bats, then eventually came across Iris fighting a group of zombies with Wyatt. We decided to band together and built this place. Then, a few months after that, you came wandering in from between the trees."

* * *

Dawn eventually came, and with the daylight, all of them worked together to tear down the smaller huts and use the material to expand the warehouse at the center of their palisade. Each of them would now have a small, sparse, but adequate sleeping spot, and they moved the campfire onto a stone slate inside the walls, in order to avoid burning their stored goods, which were constantly growing in number. Bazdin began digging up a small charcoal pit, "just in case, and 'cause I might want black powder for me 'nades".

Geralt had been observing the zombies that dawn, trying to confirm a suspicion. True to his thoughts, the horde did not completely disperse - while parts wandered off, a large group stayed together and started shambling westward, towards an ominous gathering of trees Iris had told them to steer clear of. Geralt did not like the vibe of that place - it felt... old.

"Wyatt. You're the guide, right?"

The man himself looked up from where he was writing in a small notebook.

"Indeed, he is I, I is him. And I am I, of course. You have a question?"

"What's in that forest to the west?"

Geralt saw his eyes lose some of their focus, and he spoke in an ominous tone, "Ooh, Slayer, that place is old, dangerous. 'tis known as 'the Briar'. I knew a fellow once - curious type, like you - who wandered there inspite my warning, and he never came out. I'm sure he's still alive, even though he might not want to be. It's a den of savagery you see, of old blood and magick. When the wind blows favorable, it carries the Briar's blood-dripping seeds across the land. You'll know you've crossed into it when you see the skull totems. They're meant to warn you away - if you decide go that way, could you keep a watch out for the fellow that got lost?"

And he turned back to his book.

Geralt wandered off in search of Iris - maybe she would have less cryptic information.

"Ah yes, the Briar. It's ominous for sure - I only wandered into it once, really, but I can tell you it's dangerous. There's... things moving between the trees, with glowing yellow eyes. The wood looks good for building, though. Not sure if we could harvest any with the monsters that undoubtedly lurk there."

"Could they be human?"

"I doubt it, unless you know any humans with glowing eyes?"

* * *

The next day, Geralt set out for the Briar. He was short on Swallow, so he agreed to take one of the Nurse's 'healing potions' along. If he was lucky, they might work on him. Or they might not. He had no intention of finding out during battle, in either case.

The Briar was just as ominous as Iris had described. skull totems, likewise, ringed its extent, big, knobbly trees beginning to grow just beyond it. The canopy was so thick that little sunlight filtered through, and a light rain started to fall when he set foot into the woods. Geralt could easily follow the trail of broken branches left by the passing zombie horde.

It wasn't long until he spied the first set of eyes, too. Wreathed in leaves, sickly yellow points silently followed him from the trees as he walked deeper and deeper into the Briar, until he stood before the mouth of a large cavern, which he'd determined was the place the zombies had entered. And hopefully, the lost human as well.

Keeping a torch in hand, Geralt walked slowly and with caution - caves like this were rarely safe, and an even gait would alert him to any traps on the floor. Jumping down a small ledge, he was suddenly greeted with a yawning chasm, the light of his torch the only thing keeping him from stepping into empty air. Lighting another torch, he threw the first one in, and watched it become smaller and smaller until it vanished in the darkness below.

Yawning indeed.

Luckily, he'd brought a length of rope from the storehouse for an occasion just like this - he tied one end around a thick root, liberally doused the knot in molten slime from his torch and watched the rope crystallize in the air. Nobody would be stranding him down there.

As he descended, Geralt kept his ears open and his movements as quiet as possible, so as to hopefully hear either the lost human, the horde of zombies or any other threat lurking in the dark.

There was a shuffle of leaves directly behind him, and only quick reflexes saved him from being bashed off the rope. A strange, floating beast of some sort was coming straight at him, a single eye wildly spinning at its center! Drawing the silver blade from his back, torch between his teeth and second hand gripping the rope tightly, he swung his sword at the beast, striking true.

Bleeding from a large gash in its body, it shrieked and wobbled away, only to turn around and come back at him!

_'It sounds like it's made of dry leaves. Maybe...'_

Switching his sword for the torch clenched between his teeth, he wildly poked at the beast, catching its leafy coat on fire. It spun wildly away from him, bashing against the wall in order to put out the fire, but slowly grew more sluggish as the fire consumed it whole. Eventually, it dropped down, vanishing into the dark below just as his torch had.

Geralt took a deep breath, then continued descending. Before long, he was hanging above an entrance to the side of the chasm, and swung himself inside, both hands free once again. His jaw ached from where it had been biting down on the torch, but he could not stop to take a rest - because he'd started hearing someone shout, faintly, in the darkness ahead.

_"Is someone out there? Help! Help me!"_

Descending into the crevice, he simply followed the voice, eventually coming upon a pit in the floor.

"King's Blood, a human! cut me loose! I don't know when those savages will come back!"

Geralt jumped down, his light illuminating a man tied up in vines. After cutting him loose, the man thanked him profusely while rubbing his wrists.

"I thought for sure I'd die here. Thank you, stranger. Come on, we need to get out of here. They'll surely come looking for me soon."

"Hold on," Geralt stopped him, "I came here only partly because of you. I also followed a small horde of zombies here - do you know anything about that?"

"Zombies? So that's what those were! I don't understand their language, but when they captured me, I saw a few of these Briar savages... herd, almost, a group of figures. They were riding those wildwood watchers of theirs down into the chasm."

"Wildwood watchers?"

"Oh, sorry, that's what I call the floating leaf-clouds. I think the name fits, personally."

* * *

Adrian the Explorer, as his name turned out to be, was an invaluable guide to the Briar. He'd apparently been studying it for a few weeks before being captured, and had a theory that the Briar itself was some sort of enormous plant, and all its creatures some sort of sophisticated defense-mechanism.

They ran across two patrols of briar natives, heavily armed and undoubtedly searching for Adrian - why they were so interested in him even the man himself didn't know. One was quickly dispatched with Geralt's silver blade, but the other patrol had a member that wielded some strange form of sorcery. His sword could barely deflect its magic, the bolts tarnishing the metal with every hit, but eventually Adrian stabbed it through the chest from behind, with Geralt himself acting as bait for the being's spells.

They wandered deeper into the Briar, following a clear trail of shuffling zombie footsteps, until Geralt's enhanced hearing began to pick up their characteristically dead shrieks and moans.

They'd entered another crevice at some point, and at the end of its tunnel, a small chamber opened up. There was a pit with the zombies roaming around inside, and on the other side of the room, a glowing altar of some kind. Floating above the altar sat what was unmistakably a wraith.

"I knew it," whispered Adrian, "They have a leader. Some kind of ghost, or spirit..."

"Wraith" corrected Geralt.

"Wraith, wraith...Maybe... glade-wraith?"

"Fitting, I suppose."

As they watched, tendrils of light began connecting the Glade-Wraith to the zombies in its pit, and their ravenous noises intensified, alongside the scraping of their claw-like hands.

"It's riling them up." murmured Geralt.

"We need to stop it. I don't know for what fell purpose it's doing this, but it needs to stop."

"Agreed."

They concocted a quick plan. Geralt would charge at the Wraith, disrupting whatever magic it was casting on the pit, drawing its attention to him. He felt confident that he could hold his own against a wraith. Meanwhile, Adrian would sneak around the chamber, and use one of Bazdin's grenades to collapse the pit, hopefully crushing the zombies. Then he'd come to assist Geralt, and together they would hopefully destroy the Glade-Wraith.

* * *

Geralt charged into the chamber, silver sword held high, and started spewing insults at the creature. Just like they'd planned, its magic ceased immediately, and the floating specter zeroed in on him, before shooting across the room. With a quick parry, the wraith was flung to the side, its claws only slicing empty air.

His Quen saved him from the monster's magic, which came in quick, jerky bursts, before he had to parry once more. This time, its claws caught his arm, and he grunted as he felt razor-sharp knives rend the flesh of his lower leg on the next swipe. It hadn't hit an artery, but he had to be more careful.

Just as the beast reeled around for another swipe, a deafening explosion shook the room, knocking Geralt off-balance and smacking the wraith into a nearby wall. It shrieked, then charged Geralt once more, both hands outstretched with long, glistening claws extended for murder.

Thinking quick, Geralt rolled underneath the Wraith, whose momentum carried it directly into the deadly point of Adrian's blade, who'd taken point behind Geralt. It gave a few weak gasps, and attempted to slice at him, but quickly expired when Geralt's silver blade cleaved it in two. Without the force animating it, its body disintegrated into a pile of leaves, branches, bark and vines.

"Consider yourself... disembodied!" shouted Adrian, completely ruining the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: The Briar, the Glade Wraith and the Adventurer are all from a mod called "Spirit Mod". If you play modded Terraria, check it out. It's really great.


End file.
